Image credit: Angkor Hospital for Children (CC BY 4.0)
Certain bacteria that normally live on the skin or in the nose without causing problems can sometimes lead to diseases elsewhere in the body. For example, the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus can cause blood infections or a severe and painful infection of the muscle called pyomyositis, which is very common in children who live in the tropics.
Scientists believe that pyomyositis happens when S. aureus bacteria in the blood stream infect the muscles. Some strains of this bacteria are more likely to cause such infections, but why is unclear. One potential cause is a toxin produced by some S. aureus bacteria called Panton-Valentine leucocidin (PVL). So far, studies looking at whether PVL-producing bacteria are more likely to cause pyomyositis have had conflicting results.
Now, Young et al. show that the gene for PVL is always present in S. aureus strains that cause pyomyosistis in Cambodian children, but is rarely found in S. aureus taken from the noses of their healthy counterparts. In the experiments, bacteria were collected from 101 children with pyomyositis and from the noses of 417 healthy children at the Angkor Hospital for Children in Cambodia over a 5-year period. The DNA in these bacteria were compared using very sensitive genetic techniques. The comparisons showed having the gene for PVL increased the odds of having pyomyositis 130-fold, showing that this one toxin likely accounts for much of the risk of developing this disease.
If more studies confirm the link between PVL and pyomyositis, developing vaccines that block the gene for PVL might be one way to protect children in the tropics from developing this infection. Treating children with pyomyositis with antibiotics that reduce the production of the PVL toxin may also be helpful.
